here we go again

the remote-retrospective-where-most-of-the-team-are-muted-and-clearly-tweeting-or-doing-other-stuff

any ideas on how to improve this?

Relatable, just start shooting people with nerf guns if you see them on their phones

@Tayo it's a remote retrospective, everyone are working from their homes. Even with cam, is hard to see that.
I am even ranting here (?)

@elvieeejo idk then lol

I'm in a remote retrospective right now and am totally on devRant 😅

I can zone out with nothing - that works even in attendance meetings.

@Root
aren't you in the same retrospective as me ? lol

Seems like you're having them too often or in the wrong format?

@ArcaneEye once a month.

the format definitely, but some of the members does not seem to care either

@elvieeejo I don't think we have any employees in or from Argentina.

@dUcKtYpEd you don't 'incentivize people to show they care'. Management 101, you WANT then to care, not to show they do and that's where it gets tricky. Specifically though, you do not drive incentive by putting peoples' asses on the line, that's how you end up on r/manglement or devRant.

Usually you'll drive incentive with office perks, social stuff and the feeling of having an impact on your work day and the decisions being made around you. All of this can be hard in a remote environment since office perks and social things have minimal opportunity to shine, but the solution is rarely to tighten the screws - if a whole team underperforms that's often just as much on management as it is when they overperform.

If people are inattentive at the monthly retrospective, they probably don't feel like it affects them (and if they perform fine even though they are inattentive, maybe it doesn't) or they don't feel like they have any effect by being attentive...

... and this is either true, or management isn't making clear why this meeting is important or what impact it has.

It's great that you are motivated by competition - you probably like the ability to go the extra mile or perform at a higher gear and reap some reward from it, that's great and you should talk to your manager about implementing this in your employment, but it's far from for everyone in this field - rather the opposite often, and since 'competitive' often means staying late or crunching to reach a deadline, people with lives outside work - that be hobbies, hubbies, children or any number of things - will find the pressure problematic as it encroaches on the things that are important - priorities shift, and staying at work till 8 to hit a deadline quickly stops being a priority when other things appear.